Glass
by ForeverADramioneShipper
Summary: Hermione Granger. Worthless. Bookworm. Know-it-all. Mudblood. Ugly. Stuck up. Suicidal. Set during 6th year. Mostly plot compliant, with a change in the canon couples.


The cold glass pressed against her cheek, Hermione awoke once again discovering herself to be sat on the windowsill in an empty classroom, her face resting on the window. The grey-brown bricks supporting her back were not very comfortable, and had given her backache sometime after she had fallen asleep, into the early hours of the morning. Shifting slightly, a sharp jolt of pain ran through the base of her spine, and she froze to let it pass before trying to move again. Her bare feet touched the stone ground, and she felt goosebumps raise on her legs. She was freezing; the thin white nightdress she was clothed in was not enough to prevent the coldness seeping through during the night.

She checked her watch, the one she always kept on in case of emergency. _Fifteen minutes to make it back to the dorm before the other girls wake up. _She stepped stealthily along the twisting hallways on her way back to the dormitories, careful not to make a sound. She was practiced at this; she was completely silent.

When she arrived at the dorms to find all of the other three students still sleeping soundly. Parvati Patil, beautiful as she was, layed in all her gorgeousness with the perfection of a sleeping princess. Lavender Brown, often referred to by Hermione herself as a 'blonde bimbo', was not so pretty in her sleep as Parvati, but from the slight pout of her lips still present even in sleep, it was clear to Hermione that she was confident, proud and arrogant. Ginny Weasley, the fiery redhead with a temper to match. Her brow was furrowed, indicating that the dream she was having was not a pleasant one. Hermione was unsurprised by this; it was a well-known fact that Ginny was in love with Harry, who was going through a rough time at that moment. Then again, when wasn't he? Before she would let her mind wander to the possibility of Harry's death, she quickly shifted her eyes to her destination, the bathroom.

Once inside she turned on the shower and twisted the temperature control down; all the other girls liked their showers far hotter than hers. As it heated, Hermione looked in the mirror at her pallid, pale face, disappointed at what she saw. Her once moderately attractive face had become whiter and more sallow from all the bad nights, her once vibrant and bushy brown hair seemed to have deflated, hanging loosely now around her upper torso. Her eyes no longer their old, spark-filled brown selves. There was no spark of life anymore.

She stripped off her nightdress, and looked again at her reflection. She could see the faint outlines of every rib. She wasn't anorexic yet, but she was definately close. Sighing, she looked up at her own face again. It must have been one of the worse nights last night, as the tearstains left on her cheeks were wider than usual. She couldn't look anymore, so she turned away and got into the shower.

Sometime while she was in the shower, the castle seemed to come alive, hundreds of hungry students flooding the corridors on the way to the Great Hall. Hermione braced herself for yet another day of the same endlessly painful routine: eat breakfast, answer any and all questions asked, eat lunch, answer questions, eat dinner, read a book, go to bed, cry in an empty classroom with no knowledge of how she got there.

Hermione ate breakfast with her usual group of friends, Harry, Ron and Ginny, and as usual, they didn't speak to her. She felt as if she were turning into the air, completely invisible to the human eye, or at least to the eyes of any other student; she was the pride and joy of most professors. She continued through the day, completely as normal, sticking to her routine, with the added surprise of being called a Mudblood four times by various Slytherin slugs throughout the day, and then, once again, she found herself at gone midnight staring out of an empty classroom window at the sky and the lake, a stream of tears reflecting in the silver glow of moonlight.

Most people who saw Hermione Granger cry would expect it to be because of a fight with Ron or Harry, or because of the stresses living as the best friend of the Boy-Who-Lived would bring, or because standing in Harry's shadow gave her no identity, or even out of jealousy towards Lavender Brown for her established, admittedly mostly physical relationship with Ron. None of these were correct, by a long shot.

She cried not because of Lavender Brown herself, but because of the broken bond between her and Ron it had caused. Of course, she was upset when Ron had chosen the shallow, self-important girl above herself, and she was hurt. But she was not jealous of the bimbo, and never would be.

She cried not because of a lack of identity, but because being the nerd of the Golden Trio had made people learn to expect things from her; that she be a bookworm, that she be a know-it-all, that she be a muggleborn witch and proud, that she be the epitome of strength and bravery all the time, because she was a Gryffindor. She could not always live up to these expectations.

She cried not because the Trio fought, but because they didn't. They never did anything with her any more, rarely noticed her, just expected her to tag along and be willing to be used as a personal research manual whenever they needed her.

Hermione Granger; Mudblood. Hermione Granger; know-it-all. Hermione Granger; bookworm.

_Hermione Granger; person,_ She wanted to add, but she knew she couldn't. She wasn't a person, not anymore, and no one notices. No one cares.

_No one cares._

_**No one cares.**_

The words echoed. It was at this moment that Hermione realised she was no longer sitting harmlessly next to the window, crying her problems away. She was standing now, on the sill of the tall window, her bare feet cold against the stone and her hair and nightdress being blown back by the cool night breeze from the window, now fully open. She looked up into the night sky, at the half hidden moon. One step.

_**No one cares.**_

She stepped.

She fell for exactly half of a second, and then an arm had her around her waist, pulling her back inside, back into the spiral of unhappiness.

She was vaguely aware that the arm wrapped around her waist was attached to a male body, and the chest her ear was now pressed against was rumbling because he was shouting to someone. Hermione's eyes were closed, but she could hear the thunderous sound of a few pairs of heavy feet, and more senseless babbling that she decided must have been people talking, but she could not understand what they were saying and she was too limp and weak to open her eyes. She would rather just fade into the blackness than face the consequences of being caught attempting suicide. That jolted her back to reality.

She had tried to commit suicide. She, Hermione Granger, Mudblood Gryffindor extraordinaire, had tried to off herself!

The man was kneeling on the floor, supporting her head and body against his own. The arm around her shifted, and then moved off completely. She felt herself being levitated off of the man and into the air, still curled up almost into a ball. The next thing she knew, she was laying in an infirmary bed, several concerned faces surrounding her.

It was then that she decided everyone would want answers, and so it was then that she let the blackness consume her.


End file.
